MONDAY 20TH JUNE
Jeremiah 28.5-9
True or False
One of the most wonderful things about being a Christian is knowing that God speaks through people. The phenomenon of God speaking through people is called prophecy. When God speaks to us and we know that we hear Him, our relationship with Him gets so much stronger. A few years ago my wife was in the Prince Charles Hospital after being rushed to hospital with serious heart problems. The night before she had tests to see what operation to perform, God spoke to Fr Chris Clegg who was in Caboolture. He woke up in the early hours and he heard what he thought was God speaking to him, "Pray for Tom's wife". He did. About that time Wendy suddenly got better. When they did the tests, they were clear! A problem can arise when people claim that God has spoken to them. How do we know whether it's God speaking or our own imaginations?
Today's reading in verse 9 tells us that the only way we can tell is if what God says comes true. Jeremiah was an important prophet in Old Testament times. He was given a very unpleasant task by God. God told him to tell everyone that because the people of Judah had strayed away from following the Lord, they were going to be destroyed by enemies from Babylon (now Iraq). No-one wanted to hear this bad news. Great efforts were made to get rid of Jeremiah for saying such things. The people much preferred the message of Hananiah because he said that soon there would be peace. Which of these prophets had a message from God? The one whose message came true. History records how the Babylonians utterly destroyed Jerusalem and the people were captives for seventy years.
Sometimes when God speaks and we are not sure, we can put out a fleece (see the story of Gideon's fleece in Judges 6.36-40). Ask for a sign to confirm that God has spoken.
PRAYER: Father God, we thank you that because you love us so much, you speak to us. Help us to listen and obey, even if the message is not a pleasant one. Help us to be sure it is you speaking to us, through Jesus our Lord. Amen.
TUESDAY 21ST JUNE
Psalm 89.1-4,15-18
Acclaim the Lord
We have an absolutely fantastic, miraculous, wonderful God. He is so wonderful because He pours out so much love on His people. It gives me great delight to go on singing about God's great love and to make known this love to as many people as we can. One of the greatest blessings a person can have is the showering down of God's goodness in his life when he learns to acclaim God. "Acclaim" means, in the dictionary, "to honour or meet with applause". I have discovered the best way to acclaim God is to praise and worship Him in enthusiastic singing with every musical instrument we can find, clapping our hands, raising our hands and dancing with joy. If the Broncos or Lions were acclaimed in the way most churches acclaim God, they would be so despondent that they would never ever win a match! When we have acclaimed God, our life changes and we experience His presence all day long. We know that God is with us. We rejoice and are happy all day long because we mostly think of the name of Jesus. When this happens, how strong we feel! We feel so protected, so secure. We know we are being shielded from all the attacks of the enemy.
PRAYER: Lord God, pour down your Spirit to make us enthusiastically acclaim you in whatever way we can. May we experience your presence all day long and rejoice continuously, pray all the time and be thankful whatever happens to us, through Jesus our Saviour. Amen.
WEDNESDAY 22ND JUNE
ROMANS 6.12-15
Sin not your master
In verse 11 off this chapter it says,, "Count yourself dead to sin and alive to God". We now look at the implications of having the faith to believe that that part of us that causes us to sin (our flesh or sinful human nature) is dead and that it has been replaced with new life from Jesus. For this to happen all the mighty power of God has been at work in us. It is the same enormous power God used when He raised Jesus from the dead (see Ephesians 1.19-20).
In verses 12 & 13 God commands us to not let sin reign in our mortal bodies and to not offer parts of our bodies to sin as instruments of wickedness. We can keep this command! But we can only keep it because that gigantic power from God is available to us and is working in us. We can positively offer ourselves to God instead. Jesus has made us acceptable to God. He has brought us from death to life! He has given us all the power we need to make every part of our body an instrument that pleases God. We are not under law but grace. This means we are made acceptable to God, not because we are good at keeping the rules God has made, but by our relying on the power of God to work in us and make us acceptable. The more we trust in God and draw on His power, the more victorious our lives will be.
PRAYER: Lord Jesus, we thank you for the great miracle you are working now in each of us. As we trust in you, your power is making it impossible for us to sin and so possible to be acceptable to God in every way. Amen.
THURSDAY 23RD JUNE
Romans 6.15-23
Free gift of God - Eternal Life
Because we are not under the law but under grace, does this mean that we are free to do what we like and go on sinning? Paul answers this question very emphatically - no, no, no! When we no longer offer ourselves as instruments of sinfulness and offer ourselves as instruments of God, we become God's slaves. Before that we were slaves to sin. Those who remain slaves to sin end up in death, but those who become slaves of God escape death. They become His slaves for ever. Remember, a slave was someone who was forced to do everything his master told him to do. Sin's slaves are forced to sin. God's slaves are forced to do what is right all the time. We've been set free from our master and been attached to another. We can't go wrong. God makes all His slaves holy. We have been chosen to be His slaves. God is making us holy. The result of being holy and being made totally acceptable by God is for us to share eternal life. The result of remaining sin's slaves is death, for "the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord" (v.23).
PRAYER: Jesus, thank you for rescuing us from being slaves to sin. Please make us slaves of God so that we are made holy and totally acceptable by your Father. Thank you for the gift of eternal life you have given us. Amen.
FRIDAY 24TH JUNE
Matthew 10.40-41
Identified with Jesus
Today we see the enormous extent of God's love for us. When the miracle we have been talking about in the last two days is experienced by each of us, He loves us so much He makes us one with Himself. The miracle is when His power works in us so powerfully that we stop being slaves to sin and start being His slaves. We are born again into new people! The way we get the new life is that Jesus comes and lives in us. It's no longer we who live, but Jesus who lives in us. God completely identifies Himself with us. Jesus said that because of this, anyone who receives us, receives Him! Jesus is so one with God that when we receive Jesus, we also receive the Father. God has chosen certain people to be the special ones through whom He speaks. They are prophets.
Jesus said that if we receive these special people of God, God will give us the same rewards as He gives to them. He goes on to say that anyone who receives a righteous man, which means born-again Christian, will receive the reward due to that person. Jesus, his Father, and the Holy Spirit all come to people when they accept His born-again followers. Jesus wants us to seek the lost and give them the opportunity to receive us and Him and His Father and the Holy Spirit.
PRAYER: Lord, help us all to receive the ministers of your Gospel. Help us to receive all born-again Christians. Thank you that when we do, we receive you, the Father and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
SATURDAY 25TH JUNE
Matthew 10.42
Even a cup of cold water
This is a wonderful truth leading us all to become the most generous people on earth. The truth is that every time we give such a little thing as a glass of cold water to any little one who has become Jesus' disciple (all born-again Christians), we give it to Jesus. Generosity is such an important part of being one of God's people. Generosity is love in action. You can give without loving but it's impossible to love without giving. There are two main ways we can show our generosity to our wonderful, fantastic God.
Firstly, we can lay aside one tenth of all we earn and give it to God by giving it to His church. We say a tithe (one tenth of our income) because this is the Biblical standard of giving to God (see Malachi 3.6-12).
As well as giving to God directly, the second way is to give to him indirectly. When we give to others we give to God. Who gets the most Birthday presents and Christmas presents? God does. He gets all our presents put together. He loves us so much that when we give to Him, He gives back to us, but He multiplies what we give. Every generous person will be so richly rewarded by God. We can always go on being generous because His Word says He will make us to be rich enough to be generous on every occasion.
PRAYER: Dear loving, generous Father, it gives us much joy to give to you. Help us to give you our tithes and to be generous to you by being generous with each other, through your most generous Son, Jesus. Amen.
SUNDAY 26TH. JUNE
THIS WEEK’S MESSAGE
The bible tells us today that when we were baptised into Christ Jesus we were baptised into His death. We died with Jesus on the cross. But just as Jesus was raised from death so we are raised with Him to live a new life. What does all this mean to us?
In Baptism and when we made the decision to accept Jesus as the Lord and saviour of our lives we completely surrendered our lives into His hands. When we were baptised into Him we became one with Him. We completely identified our lives with Jesus. We believe that when He died on the cross we died too. When He rose again we rose with Him. This is symbolised in total emersion baptism when the person being baptised is submerged under the water and rises up out of the water.
When Jesus died on the cross He not only payed the price for our sins but also released tremendous power. I call it the incredible power to love. When we receive this power it causes the selfish human nature in us to die. This is the inner part of each one of us which causes us to sin. All sin begins when we put ourselves before God and other people.
Jesus always lived for others. He gave out pure love. When we are one with Him, His pure love flows through us!
Jesus told us to take up our cross and follow Him. This means that we must always be willing to die to self: To put God first, others second and ourselves last.
Paul tells us to reckon or count ourselves dead to sin but alive in Christ Jesus. He uses mathematical language whish is always accurate! That means we believe without the slightest doubt that when we take up our cross and follow Jesus we die with Him.(Our sinful human natures die) and His life flows through us!!!!
Love is flowing like a river
Flowing out through You and me
Spreading out into the desert
Setting all the captives free
PRAYER: Thank you so much Lord Jesus that it is no longer we who live but You who lives in us. Give us the faith to believe this and the power to live like You. Amen.
MONDAY 20TH JUNE
Jeremiah 28.5-9
True or False
One of the most wonderful things about being a Christian is knowing that God speaks through people. The phenomenon of God speaking through people is called prophecy. When God speaks to us and we know that we hear Him, our relationship with Him gets so much stronger. A few years ago my wife was in the Prince Charles Hospital after being rushed to hospital with serious heart problems. The night before she had tests to see what operation to perform, God spoke to Fr Chris Clegg who was in Caboolture. He woke up in the early hours and he heard what he thought was God speaking to him, "Pray for Tom's wife". He did. About that time Wendy suddenly got better. When they did the tests, they were clear! A problem can arise when people claim that God has spoken to them. How do we know whether it's God speaking or our own imaginations?
Today's reading in verse 9 tells us that the only way we can tell is if what God says comes true. Jeremiah was an important prophet in Old Testament times. He was given a very unpleasant task by God. God told him to tell everyone that because the people of Judah had strayed away from following the Lord, they were going to be destroyed by enemies from Babylon (now Iraq). No-one wanted to hear this bad news. Great efforts were made to get rid of Jeremiah for saying such things. The people much preferred the message of Hananiah because he said that soon there would be peace. Which of these prophets had a message from God? The one whose message came true. History records how the Babylonians utterly destroyed Jerusalem and the people were captives for seventy years.
Sometimes when God speaks and we are not sure, we can put out a fleece (see the story of Gideon's fleece in Judges 6.36-40). Ask for a sign to confirm that God has spoken.
PRAYER: Father God, we thank you that because you love us so much, you speak to us. Help us to listen and obey, even if the message is not a pleasant one. Help us to be sure it is you speaking to us, through Jesus our Lord. Amen.
TUESDAY 21ST JUNE
Psalm 89.1-4,15-18
Acclaim the Lord
We have an absolutely fantastic, miraculous, wonderful God. He is so wonderful because He pours out so much love on His people. It gives me great delight to go on singing about God's great love and to make known this love to as many people as we can. One of the greatest blessings a person can have is the showering down of God's goodness in his life when he learns to acclaim God. "Acclaim" means, in the dictionary, "to honour or meet with applause". I have discovered the best way to acclaim God is to praise and worship Him in enthusiastic singing with every musical instrument we can find, clapping our hands, raising our hands and dancing with joy. If the Broncos or Lions were acclaimed in the way most churches acclaim God, they would be so despondent that they would never ever win a match! When we have acclaimed God, our life changes and we experience His presence all day long. We know that God is with us. We rejoice and are happy all day long because we mostly think of the name of Jesus. When this happens, how strong we feel! We feel so protected, so secure. We know we are being shielded from all the attacks of the enemy.
PRAYER: Lord God, pour down your Spirit to make us enthusiastically acclaim you in whatever way we can. May we experience your presence all day long and rejoice continuously, pray all the time and be thankful whatever happens to us, through Jesus our Saviour. Amen.
WEDNESDAY 22ND JUNE
ROMANS 6.12-15
Sin not your master
In verse 11 off this chapter it says,, "Count yourself dead to sin and alive to God". We now look at the implications of having the faith to believe that that part of us that causes us to sin (our flesh or sinful human nature) is dead and that it has been replaced with new life from Jesus. For this to happen all the mighty power of God has been at work in us. It is the same enormous power God used when He raised Jesus from the dead (see Ephesians 1.19-20).
In verses 12 & 13 God commands us to not let sin reign in our mortal bodies and to not offer parts of our bodies to sin as instruments of wickedness. We can keep this command! But we can only keep it because that gigantic power from God is available to us and is working in us. We can positively offer ourselves to God instead. Jesus has made us acceptable to God. He has brought us from death to life! He has given us all the power we need to make every part of our body an instrument that pleases God. We are not under law but grace. This means we are made acceptable to God, not because we are good at keeping the rules God has made, but by our relying on the power of God to work in us and make us acceptable. The more we trust in God and draw on His power, the more victorious our lives will be.
PRAYER: Lord Jesus, we thank you for the great miracle you are working now in each of us. As we trust in you, your power is making it impossible for us to sin and so possible to be acceptable to God in every way. Amen.
THURSDAY 23RD JUNE
Romans 6.15-23
Free gift of God - Eternal Life
Because we are not under the law but under grace, does this mean that we are free to do what we like and go on sinning? Paul answers this question very emphatically - no, no, no! When we no longer offer ourselves as instruments of sinfulness and offer ourselves as instruments of God, we become God's slaves. Before that we were slaves to sin. Those who remain slaves to sin end up in death, but those who become slaves of God escape death. They become His slaves for ever. Remember, a slave was someone who was forced to do everything his master told him to do. Sin's slaves are forced to sin. God's slaves are forced to do what is right all the time. We've been set free from our master and been attached to another. We can't go wrong. God makes all His slaves holy. We have been chosen to be His slaves. God is making us holy. The result of being holy and being made totally acceptable by God is for us to share eternal life. The result of remaining sin's slaves is death, for "the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord" (v.23).
PRAYER: Jesus, thank you for rescuing us from being slaves to sin. Please make us slaves of God so that we are made holy and totally acceptable by your Father. Thank you for the gift of eternal life you have given us. Amen.
FRIDAY 24TH JUNE
Matthew 10.40-41
Identified with Jesus
Today we see the enormous extent of God's love for us. When the miracle we have been talking about in the last two days is experienced by each of us, He loves us so much He makes us one with Himself. The miracle is when His power works in us so powerfully that we stop being slaves to sin and start being His slaves. We are born again into new people! The way we get the new life is that Jesus comes and lives in us. It's no longer we who live, but Jesus who lives in us. God completely identifies Himself with us. Jesus said that because of this, anyone who receives us, receives Him! Jesus is so one with God that when we receive Jesus, we also receive the Father. God has chosen certain people to be the special ones through whom He speaks. They are prophets.
Jesus said that if we receive these special people of God, God will give us the same rewards as He gives to them. He goes on to say that anyone who receives a righteous man, which means born-again Christian, will receive the reward due to that person. Jesus, his Father, and the Holy Spirit all come to people when they accept His born-again followers. Jesus wants us to seek the lost and give them the opportunity to receive us and Him and His Father and the Holy Spirit.
PRAYER: Lord, help us all to receive the ministers of your Gospel. Help us to receive all born-again Christians. Thank you that when we do, we receive you, the Father and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
SATURDAY 25TH JUNE
Matthew 10.42
Even a cup of cold water
This is a wonderful truth leading us all to become the most generous people on earth. The truth is that every time we give such a little thing as a glass of cold water to any little one who has become Jesus' disciple (all born-again Christians), we give it to Jesus. Generosity is such an important part of being one of God's people. Generosity is love in action. You can give without loving but it's impossible to love without giving. There are two main ways we can show our generosity to our wonderful, fantastic God.
Firstly, we can lay aside one tenth of all we earn and give it to God by giving it to His church. We say a tithe (one tenth of our income) because this is the Biblical standard of giving to God (see Malachi 3.6-12).
As well as giving to God directly, the second way is to give to him indirectly. When we give to others we give to God. Who gets the most Birthday presents and Christmas presents? God does. He gets all our presents put together. He loves us so much that when we give to Him, He gives back to us, but He multiplies what we give. Every generous person will be so richly rewarded by God. We can always go on being generous because His Word says He will make us to be rich enough to be generous on every occasion.
PRAYER: Dear loving, generous Father, it gives us much joy to give to you. Help us to give you our tithes and to be generous to you by being generous with each other, through your most generous Son, Jesus. Amen.
SUNDAY 26TH. JUNE
THIS WEEK’S MESSAGE
The bible tells us today that when we were baptised into Christ Jesus we were baptised into His death. We died with Jesus on the cross. But just as Jesus was raised from death so we are raised with Him to live a new life. What does all this mean to us?
In Baptism and when we made the decision to accept Jesus as the Lord and saviour of our lives we completely surrendered our lives into His hands. When we were baptised into Him we became one with Him. We completely identified our lives with Jesus. We believe that when He died on the cross we died too. When He rose again we rose with Him. This is symbolised in total emersion baptism when the person being baptised is submerged under the water and rises up out of the water.
When Jesus died on the cross He not only payed the price for our sins but also released tremendous power. I call it the incredible power to love. When we receive this power it causes the selfish human nature in us to die. This is the inner part of each one of us which causes us to sin. All sin begins when we put ourselves before God and other people.
Jesus always lived for others. He gave out pure love. When we are one with Him, His pure love flows through us!
Jesus told us to take up our cross and follow Him. This means that we must always be willing to die to self: To put God first, others second and ourselves last.
Paul tells us to reckon or count ourselves dead to sin but alive in Christ Jesus. He uses mathematical language whish is always accurate! That means we believe without the slightest doubt that when we take up our cross and follow Jesus we die with Him.(Our sinful human natures die) and His life flows through us!!!!
Love is flowing like a river
Flowing out through You and me
Spreading out into the desert
Setting all the captives free
PRAYER: Thank you so much Lord Jesus that it is no longer we who live but You who lives in us. Give us the faith to believe this and the power to live like You. Amen.